Sleeves On Saturdays

 Converting The Shirred Sleeve To A Raglan Sleeve

Last week we did this Shirred Sleeve. I was asked about how to do this sleeve as a raglan sleeve as the raglan sleeve fits them better. There are a lot of nice properties to a raglan sleeve. Thye are easier to sew into the garment and they do lend themselves to a better fit over the shoulder. Next week I will show you how to draft a raglan sleeve. They are really quite easy and we will do a series on great designs that can be applied to a raglan sleeve.Today I am going to show you how to take the raglan sleeve and add the shirring detail at the cuff area.  

A typical raglan sleeve looks like the above pattern pieces, two separate pattern pieces with a seam running down the middle.

 For the sleeve I showed you last week, you would not want the seam running through the tab area, so simply cut the seam allowances off the center seam of the two sleeve pieces and match the two together.

 Make sure to add seam allowance back the the shoulder area of your sleeve.

Now do exactly as we did last week, you can see the instructions here.

 The final pattern for last week's sleeve looked like the above picture.

The raglan sleeve pattern will look like the above picture. Easy, easy!!
Good luck. Now you see how easily adoptable the sleeve really is.

Fabulous Free Pattern Friday

Ladies Who Lunch Bag

 Today's post is all about taking a placemat and turning it into an incredible bag.

You can begin with any rectangular placemat. Mine is this wonderful wooden piece. The disks are round and flat. The principles that I used for this bag can be translated to any rectangular placemat. 

It's a very economical bag to make. This placemat only cost as you see, $5.99. Great buy.

I had the black wooden handles. The beads I purchased, but they were a good deal as well.

The interior fabric was some I had. It's a twill.

All of the pieces.

Begin by shaping the placemat in the shape you would like and place it on a piece of muslin so you can trace this for the sides of your bag..

The pattern piece for the side of my bag.

Using the placemat as my guide, I cut out 2 rectangles for my bag. I will need an outside piece and an inside piece.

Sew the side panels to the rectangles. You will have two bags that you will sew together. Make sure to leave an opening in the side of one so that you can turn once sewn together.

The interior of the bag.

In order for the bag to fold in on the sides, you will need to sew a pleat into the side panels. Do this by folding them in half and stitching down the panel about 2" to 3".

You can see my pleat in the side panel in the picture above.

In the above picture you can see how nicely the bag will fold in on the sides once the stitching has been done for the pleat. 

Now sew the interior bag to the placemat. Since my placemat had a space between the black discs, I added a bead in between each disk as I sewed the interior bag to the placemat.

I did not sew the sides to the placemat.

As you can see in the above picture, the placemat lays nicely against the interior bag without sewing the sides together.

I added a magnetic snap to the interior of my bag.

It holds the bag together very well

Since my placemat is wooden and my handles are also wooden, I used Super Glue to glue the handles to the bag. For the feet, I drilled holes into the disks and used my beads to create the feet. Looks great, but very easy to do.

For this bag, I used exactly the same principles as I used for the black bag, but I added tabs for the handles which were sewn into the interior bag.

So there you have it, an incredibly easy bag to make and no one will believe that it is a placemat.

Enjoy the start of your weekend!

Weddings To Remember

I was up quite early this morning, just couldn't sleep. Too much in my mind. Another story for another day. So rather than just stay in the bed, I (and the dogs!) went down for a cup of hot tea and a bit of dog food. From there I made my way down to my studio to do a little cleaning(I need to do a LOT of cleaning) and I came across photos of some of the work I did when I was doing wedding gowns.What a treat, a little walk down Memory Lane. Such a nice lane to take a stroll down on an early morning. Amongst all the pictures were lovely cards that had been sent to me thanking me for the work I did and expressing just how lovely they felt on their special day. Funny, I remembered the dresses but not the cards. Each bride was so much more than a client to me, I felt that they belonged to me for that very special period of time while we worked on their gown. As it turned out, most of my brides insisted that I attend their wedding. For the most part, I loved every minute although there were a few bridesmaids that I would have loved to crown and not in a good way. 

I thought I would share a bit of my early morning walk with you today. 

This is a bustier in progress. The bride had the train from her mother's gown. The rest of the dress had been ruined by a friend who had borrowed it.  The bustier was cut from the train and all of the lace that was on the train was removed and then appliqued back on the bustier. All of the beads that you see were pieces that the bride had saved from her grandmothers. There were crystal buttons, pearl necklaces, crystal necklaces, just a bag full of things. She wanted the piece to be encrusted with all that was in the bag.

 She had wanted the boning to show. I usually would do what the bride wanted unless I felt that it just wouldn't work or that it just wouldn't look good. In this instance, I knew that the lace would pretty much cover up the boning.

 A view of the back.

 Me helping her dress on her wedding day.

This was a  very special bride. The dress that she is wearing was her mother's gown. The problem with the dress was that it was about four sizes smaller than the bride. She wanted so badly to wear the gown. So what I did was take off the original sleeves. They were the very tight early 1950's sleeves. The sleeves were lace. I was able to buy satin that matched the dress fairly well. I lifted the lace on the front of the dress, made new side panels and then took lace from the sleeves and appliqued it over the new side panels which camouflaged the new satin. For the sleeves, I bought English net, combined it with silk organza and then took the rest of the lace and did appliques on the sleeves. The bottom of the skirt had some issues. It had been stained along the hem. I bought new lace that I dyed with tea to match the original lace. I became an expert at knowing the different shades that different teas would give me. The lace was sewn on and beaded. When her mother saw the dress, she cried. She was so happy. Nice.   

I've included this picture because of the funny story that goes along with it. You see the young girl on the left. She was twelve at the time. The bride did not think that it was appropriate for her to wear a strapless dress, but the child had her heart set on looking like the rest of the girls. So I told her that we could add straps. She still wasn't very happy so I told her that we would add the straps now and then later, I meant when she was older, she could take the straps out of the dress. The bride told me that later that night at the reception she looked at the child and thought something did not look the same. She had taken the straps out of her dress!! The bride asked her where the straps were and the child replied, "Rhonda said that I could take the straps out later." At that point it didn't matter. I learned to be a little more careful with what I said.

 This was such a sweet story. The bride did not have a wedding the first time around, so for their twenty-fifth anniversary, they had a wedding. The fabric for her dress came from Ghana. There was enough for her gown, her daughter's dress and the vest, bow tie and hat for her husband. She said that having a wedding where her son and daughter were able to participate made it all the sweeter.

This was such a wonderful dress to create. The bodice is made from a silk that was embroidered with a silk cord and a very fine gold wire. Thankfully the bodice was small because there was a lot of re-applique that had to be done along the seams. The skirt is a matching silk with two layers of silk chiffon overlays.

 I loved the choice of fabric for her wedding party. With such varying ages, it worked so well.

On her way to the church. We did a velvet cape that was edged in a gold cord with a matching bag. She looked like a fairy princess. The church is on Michigan Ave. across from Water Tower Place. She told me that people were running across the street to tell her how lovely she looked.
So a few of my brides. Believe it or not, I do hear from them every once in a while. A few of my brides have become good friends. I'm having dinner with one of my brides and her husband later this week. They will celebrate their 19th anniversary this year. Incredible.
Hopefully I haven't bored you with my little trip down Memory Lane.
Have a wonderful day.
Rhonda 

It's All About The Fit, Part Two

Just to refresh your memory, I began with this vintage pattern.  

 The muslin made straight off the pattern, a horrible sack that I would not want to wear.

 In yesterday's post, I took it to this point, but there were still issues in the bust area.

In order to get rid of the gap in the center front of my dress, I moved the shoulders over. On the right side of the above picture you see the neckline. Typically, I would add to the front neckline, but in this case I would like my neckline to be a little more open so I will not add to the front  and just cut the extra away from the back neckline.

In this picture I have marked in my back neckline and I have transferred the marks I made for the small back neckline dart that I would like to add.

 I transferred the marks for where I would like to take up the side seams, 

 as well as the front darts.

 You can see the underarm dart that I would like to move to the princess line that I have drawn in.

I cut my dart open.

Then I closed the underarm dart. You can see that the fabric does not want to lay flat.

 Slash to the apex of the dart.

 Now the fabric lays nice and flat and the fullness of the dart has been rotated to the princess line dart.

In order to make sure that my side seams will match, I laid my front pattern piece on top of my back pieces and cut them all together at once.

You can see the layers in this picture.The back of my dress had minimal alterations so I was able to reuse those pieces for my next muslin, but I did cut a new front muslin.

 In the above picture you can see that I have made further alterations to the left side and on the right you can see the fullness in the side panel that needs to be adjusted.

 In order to fix this issue, open up the seam and move the fullness into the seam.

 Now pin the seams back together.

 Now the front of my dress lays nice and flat.

 As you can see, the armhole needed to be remarked.

 So I began with a sack,

 and now I have a dress that fits nicely over my bust. You do see some puckering in the seams. This will disappear once I clip my seams.

 After I took the dress off, I marked in the lines of my new seams.

And now I have my final pattern. I will make the dress in the fabric below before I cut the dress out of the fabric I have intended for the embroidery. The embroidery is done before the dress is put together so just in case there are any other issues, I would like to fix them before the embroidery is completed.

Yesterday a comment was made about a book on fitting by Sarah Veblan and that she moves the shoulders just as I did in order to remove the gap in the front. I have not read her book, but I do know someone who took her class and seemed to be quite happy. For further fitting help, this may be a book that you would like to look into. 

I hope my little fitting guide has been of some help. As soon as I get the test dress finished, I'll do a final post.